Category Archives: Academic Freedom

After five years and 171 posts, reviewing George R. Stewart’s work, reporting on projects being developed to honor him, and describing his influence on human societythis web log about George R. Stewart has come to a milestone. The weblog’s author is moving.

It’s been a luxury to have a comfortable place to research and write about him, and hopefully that’s been reflected in posts that are longer and more readable than ones written on the fly. Now, the author is leaving his comfortable office, and heading out to seek new adventures. This means that there may be gaps in the posts, and posts may be less developed.

Fortunately, this is a milestone in other ways.

For one thing, all of his major work has been described here on this site. So without reading all of Stewart’s books, the fans of some of them can see the intellectual and artistic context in which they are placed. His masterwork Earth Abides, for example, can be seen as the pinnacle of his ecological novels – the books in which the ecosystem, not humans, is the protagonist. And readers of this web log will now also know that Stewart’s ecological best sellers, published long before Earth Day or the rise of the Environmental Consciousness, certainly helped bring that Consciousness about.

It is a milestone, too, in sharing those honors which he is increasingly gathering. The interpretive sign at Donner Summit is in place during the summer when the old highway he immortalized, U.S. 40, is open to traffic. The GRS ePlaque is now online at the Berkeley Historical Plaque site. (Someday, if funding is found and permission gathered, a physical plaque could be placed at the site of Stewart’s San Luis Road home.) Junlin Pan, Chinese scholar, is well along in her difficult translation of Names on the Land for an immense Chinese audience eager to learn about America. The sheet music for Philip Aaberg’s Earth Abides is soon to be published, thanks (like the US 40 sign) to the contributions of friends of Stewart. And, just perhaps, there’s an Earth Abides mini-series on the horizon. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to have been part of these things.

New GRS Interpretive Sign, Donner Summit, Historic U.S. 40, just above the Rainbow Bridge and Donner lake, and just below George R. Stewart Peak.

Along the way of the weblog, we’ve been reminded of how Stewart’s work still directs us, and encourages us. One of the great Stewart interpreters, for example, recently refused to sign an illegal loyalty oath in his unenlightened college system – a college system in a state whose voters salivate over the chance to pack weapons into diners, but apparently have little use for freedom of thought. Surely, that Stewart interpreter, that hero of thought, (a famous poet and author), was inspired by Stewart’s Year of the Oath. And as the ecosystem gets our attention through climate change, we can all be reassured by the ecological novels that humans can survive and transcend any such changes.

Stewart once wrote that although his scholarly life had often been a lonely
one, he had enjoyed some fine meetings along the way. That is true for this web log, as well. It’s brought us into conversations with a professor at Temple University, well-known author Christopher Priest, and several dedicated Stewart fans, who’ve all shared their experiences with Stewart’s books. It brought into the light a remarkable 1929 silent film of George R. Stewart and his parents, visiting his wife’s Wilson relatives in Pasadena – a film now copied, thanks to Ross Wilson Bogert and his son, and placed in the Bancroft, other Stewart collections, and the collections of the Stewart family.

So we’ve done a lot. And if this weblog needs to take a break, it’s earned the right to do it.

But the site will return, because there’s much yet to discuss. Stewart’s friends, for example, like C.S. Forester and Wallace Stegner and Bruce Catton and Frost and Sandburg and all the rest. And there will be news, of that you can be sure, about George R. Stewart and his continuing influence on us all.

The Berkeley Historical Plaque Project is dedicated to placing plaques at, or about, historic sites in Berkeley. Many of the plaques are physical, beautifully designed and placed at the locations interpreted. Others are posted at the Plaque Project’s website, as e-Plaques. The e-plaques allow people not in Berkeley to see the plaques, and learn about those being interpreted – a world wide version of the physical plaques, available to all. The e-Plaques also allow an honoring of sites and people for far less than the $1000 cost of the physical plaques.

George R. Stewart has now been honored with an ePlaque. With the permission of GRS Family Photo Collection Keeper Anna Evenson, the writing talents of Steven Finacom and company, and the leadership of Robert Kehlman, the plaque is now online at the link above. The Plaque gives a good overview of Stewart, his family, his life, and his work. It links to other honorings like the brilliant James Sallis essay on Earth Abides. (Sallis is a poet and author, the writer of the novella DRIVE which was made into an excellent movie.)

The Plaque also links to a radio script, written by Stewart’s colleague, Berkeley author “Anthony Boucher.” “Boucher,” nom de plume of William Anthony Parker White, created a series, The Casebook of Gregory Hood, which ran in the late 1940s. One episode, The Ghost Town Mortuary, “starred” George R. Stewart. Follow the link at the bottom of the plaque to read part of that script. (Some of the Gregory Hood episodes are online; unfortunately, The Ghost Town Mortuary is not.)

Eventually, it may be possible to put a physical plaque on what might be called “Ish’s House,” the house on “San Lupo Drive” which was the Stewart home when Earth Abideswas written, and Ish’s home in the novel. But that will need to wait until the time when there is funding available for it. Until then – and after – this is a fine piece of work, to be enjoyed by people in many places around the globe – and beyond, if someone on the International Space Station is a Stewart fan.

We’re near the end of our discussions of the books George R. Stewart wrote. At the end of his life, when I met him, he was working on the last one – American Given Names. In the same short period, near the end of his life, Stewart wrote two other names books: Names On the Globe, and American Given Names.

He also wrote a manuscript that was never published. Since that particular work, which is controversial, speaks to some of the same issues as The Year of the Oath, subject of the last post about the courage of author James Sallis. So this is a good place to discuss Stewart’s unpublished work.

The Shakespeare Crisis is an unpublished novel which takes us back to the same fictional university and many of the same characters as Stewart’s 1939 novel Doctor’s Oral. It is clearly inspired by events on the Berkeley campus in the post-Free Speech Movement era, when movements which had great campus support – if not government and university support – were joined by other movements which were often vicious, and counter to freedom and democracy. Stewart had been a quiet supporter of some parts of the earlier movements; but he, like many of his colleagues, was appalled at the later movements, with their damaging of buildings, disruption of classes, non-negotiable demands for huge university programs with no accountability, and the like. The novel is his answer to the gangs wandering the classrooms, breaking windows, and shouting disruptively. His villains are clearly modeled on the real villains – from across the spectrum – in the real movements.

The novel tells the story of two professors who get into a debate over the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. A young feminist journalist decides to hype the disagreement into an academic war in order to pad her resume. As she scales up the argument a seller of theses, who is also an entrepreneur of chaos, sees it as an opportunity. He gathers his regular protesters for a meeting and encourages them to make this a major war over books and learning. As things escalate, the “journalist” makes sure that the entire world knows about it, the protesters disrupt the university, and the regents act abominably. The climax is an assault on the Library by the protesters, who plan to burn its books. And in one the great concept scenes in literature, the Librarians fight them off with the tools of their trade – staplers, books presses, and the like. But one of the professors, depressed by it all, takes his life. The campus holds a meeting.

A Professor Emeritus,obviously Stewart, rises to speak.

“In those eighty years that I remember, the world has not moved … in a way thatI, as an old man, now find wholly agreeable. The trust in reason, and the sway ofthe intellect, seem to have weakened….

Like an old-fashioned preacher, I now present an anecdote that might becalled an emblem. When I took my modest walk, as I do twice daily on the campus,I saw recently a word, POWER, illegally sprayed on a wall. Then, a day ortwo later, it had been partially scrubbed away, and reduced to POW, the traditionalword having been transformed into a kind of semi-word, as if in replica ofour times, moving from reason to un-reason…. Then, this morning—againwalking—I saw it still further reduced to OW, a mere instinctual cry of humanconfusion or distress, animal-like, lacking in what we once called reason. So havemy times gone!…

There was a famous saying … in my day … “The lamps are going out all overEurope.”

Yet one of them never went out, though it flickered at times. And that was thelamp of learning, which we sometimes envisage as a torch…. And always—or, atleast, in our times—the universities.”

In our time, as universities are assaulted with politically correct thought, hiring and promotion by standards other than academic, and repeated accusations of misbehavior which, with no hearings except in the press – in the manner of that feminist reporter in the novel – one might think that the universities have seen their lights dim and feel that Stewart, like that old professor, was right.

But, after all, Stewart’s manuscript is fiction, isn’t it?

Stewart felt so strongly about the issue that when the Librarians are assaulted one of them uses a profane phrase that is beyond the pale of Stewart’s usual dignified writing. It’s almost as if one of those protesters had written that paragraph. The word would never have appeared in a published novel – Ted (Theodosia) Stewart would never have permitted it.

But there was no need to censor a publication. The book was not published. Ted almost burned it, and only allowed it to go to the Stewart Papers after long and persuasive arguments by family and university colleagues. She felt that the novel, with its condemnations of protest movements, sounded like a conservative rant. And she, like her husband, were dedicated liberals. (Ted was so progressive in her political views that she voted for Socialist Norman Thomas every time he ran for President.) Ted and others also felt that it was not a worthy example of Stewart’s brilliant style. He had bitten off more than he could chew in years when he was aging. He was also angry, so the characters are cardboard and the novel reads more like a polemic than a work of tragedy or comedy.

The Shakespeare Crisis is now only to be found in the Stewart Papers. I’ve read it, and it helped me write by biography of Stewart. If you have the desire and wherewithal to travel to Berkeley and the days to read the manuscript in the Library, you may judge it for yourself. But I would certainly not judge George R. Stewart by that book – it is far below the quality or the power or the importance of his great works like Storm or Earth Abides or Names On The Land. Consider it an experiment, like his other books that weren’t published (at least three never saw the light of day).

The next posts will return to Stewart’s published works; to his final books, on names.

In 2014, this weblog reviewed George R. Stewart’s classic work, The Year Of The Oath, a book about the loyalty oath controversy at the University of California, Berkeley. The faculty won their battle to have the oath removed. But oaths, pernicious and unconstitutional, still abound in public employment – even for teaching and research positions.

This past week, in one of the less-pleasant small world stories connected with Stewart and his work, another author in another college resigned when he was ordered to sign such an oath – years after he began teaching there. James Sallis is by coincidence a George R. Stewart scholar who wrote likely the best essay about Earth Abides for The Boston Globe. Sallis, who also wrote Drive, made into an award-winning movie starring Ryan Gosling; and he’s now written Driven, a sequel. Sallis is a poet, a novelist, and – until recently – a teacher at Phoenix College in the city of that name.

His work in the classroom drew students from a wide geographic area. He was an excellent teacher, who knows how to write well, and to sell his writing. The chance to have this man as a mentor was a great boon to the apprentice wordsmiths. But the administrators of the College – who Sallis says were professional, and asked him to stay – said he couldn’t teach without signing. He chose to follow his conscience, and resigned. The administrators, when contacted by news organizations passed the buck, in this case to the Arizona legislature who authored the oath long ago. Even local Arizona media found the entire story incredible.

Fortunately, his act of courage is having a far reach, and may eventually help result in the tossing of the oaths.

Sadly, the Year of the Oath is not yet ended. Citizens would be well-advised to put their energies into correcting that rather than various red herring issues they seem to focus on.

(Disclaimer: I refused to sign both the US Army oath – which had already been declared illegal by the Supreme Court – and the California Standard Secondary Credential application oath without qualifying statements discussing the oaths’ illegality and unethical qualities. That meant deferring teaching for a while, until the state oath was tossed out by the State Supreme Court. As for the army oath – I have the rare distinction, during a time when protesters were trying to shut down the Oakland Army Induction Center, of keeping it open and keeping employees there long after they wanted to leave.)

In one of the most egregious events of the time, the University actually granted an honorary degree to one of those who tried to destroy academic freedom in the University. Although Stewart was one of the most distinguished scholars at the University, and one of the best-known because of his histories and novels, he decided to boycott the Charter Day ceremonies as a protest against the granting of the degree to Sidney Ehrman. He also wrote a letter, sent to the University community, explaining his action.

Here is part of the letter.

I do not wish to walk in the same procession with the majority of those Regents,
whose beliefs and actions I abhor, and especially by walking behind them to
accept symbolically the position of inferiority….
I earned my doctorate by hard work and honest scholarship…. I do not believe
that the professors that once granted me that degree…. would wish me to wear
my academic regalia under such circumstances.

Those who think the purpose of a university is to field a football team would not understand his actions. But any good educator or scholar would.

After several months, the Earth Abides Project weblog is back. The long “vacation” was necessary as this writer wandered for a time, then settled in to a summer of volunteering as a Camp Host in an isolated Forest Service Campground. But the volunteer summer is ending, so there’s time to write more about George R. Stewart.

The last posts were about Stewart’s magnum opus, EARTH ABIDES. This time, we’ll look at the unplanned book which followed EA soon afterward. It’s a classic study of the battle for academic and personal freedom, entitled THE YEAR OF THE OATH.

EARTH ABIDES ends with a fire sweeping through the post-apocalyptic UC Berkeley campus. It was an unexpected but proper introduction to the events that would lead to Stewart’s oath book. A firestorm of an attack on academic freedom, led by three UC Regents – Bank of America’s Lawrence Giannini, the Hearst papers’ John Francis Neylan, and the Bechtel’s lawyer Sidney Ehrman – hit the campus just as EA was being published. In violation of University Regulation 5, the three demanded that all faculty members sign an anti-communist oath. The faculty successfully fought that requirement, but then the anti-communist oath was added to the employment contract. If faculty did not sign, they would be fired.

Several refused to sign, and were fired – most notably, the brilliant Dr. Edward C. Tolman – whose accomplishments were of great importance to science and education. But Stewart decided to join others in battling the oath. “Sign, stay, and fight!” was their motto. Each of those in opposition brought their particular strengths to the battle. Stewart, the distinguished author, wrote a book.

The book, in Stewart’s elegant prose, told the story of the oath and presented the reasons why it was illegal and therefore opposed by the faculty. Stewart had a widespread popularity with the reading public, so the book became a bestseller. It carried the day – Giannini resigned from the Regents threatening to take up vigilante action against freedom.

The oath was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the California State Supreme Court. Tolman and the others who had been fired were reinstated with back pay. As an act of apology, UC named a building for Tolman.

Stewart paid a price for his part in the battle. His publisher refused to publish OATH. Fortunately, a courageous editor at Doubleday, Howard Cady, convinced his company to publish the book….and, considering the massive sales of the book, that was a good investment by Doubleday.

After OATH, Stewart was wooed by Houghton Mifflin, and left Random House for good.

The book is considered a classic of civil liberties. It’s been reprinted several times, and is often used to encourage others who are fighting for freedom. Stewart had done his job well.

Of course, the attempts to politicize education, and thus weaken, continue unabated. Today there’s everything from “affirmative action” to “diversity” to “sexual harassment” to “terrorism” …. even the “footballization of the American University” … which are too often used to attack the freedom of a particular professor. Stewart would return to this theme in the Era of Movements, in a novel never published.

When THE YEAR OF THE OATH ended, Stewart could again turn to his theme of land and ecology. He began writing a unprecedented novel which readers still debate: Was SHEEP ROCK, Stewart’s attempt to “tell all the things that go to make up a place” a success? Or a brilliant failure?